"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he--"

'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind getting the horrors just to look at me!"

"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating you--you're sweet on the Granite Jaw--"

Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the silence re-echoed sharply.

"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"

Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge.

Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.

Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.

"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's sakes--quick--down in his room!"

In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.

"Teenie! For God's sakes--quick! He's yellin' for you--"

"Coming, Mrs. Bostrum--coming--coming--coming!"

In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling above the Granite Jaw's rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.

THE DOCTOR: Even with recovery, he will be on his back at least six months.

MISS HOAG: Oh, my God! Doctor!

THE DOCTOR: Has the man means?

THE BARON: Not a penny. He only came to the concession two months ago from a row with the Flying-Fish Troupe. He's in debt already to half the exhibit.

THE LANDLADY: He's two weeks in arrears. Not that I'm pestering the poor devil now, but Gawd knows I--need--

THE DOCTOR: Any relatives or friends to consult about the operation?

MISS HOAG (_turning and stooping_): 'Ain't you got no relations or friends, Jastrow? What was it you hollered about the aerial-wonder act?

Are they friends of yours? 'Ain't you got no relatives, no--no friends, maybe, that you could stay with awhile? Sid? Who's he? 'Ain't you, Jastrow, got no relations?

The figure under the sheet, pain-huddled, limb-twisted, turned toward the wall, palm slapping out against it.

"Hell!" said Jastrow, the Granite Jaw.

THE DOCTOR (_drawing down his shirt-sleeves_): I'll have an ambulance around in twenty minutes.

MISS HOAG: Where for, Doctor?

THE DOCTOR: Brooklyn Public Institute, for the present.

THE LANDLADY (_apron up over her head_): Poor fellow! Poor handsome fellow!

MISS HOAG: No, Doctor. No! No! No!

THE DOCTOR (_rather tiredly_): Sorry, madam, but there is no alternative.

MISS HOAG: No, no! I'll pay, Doctor. How much? How much?

THE BARON: Yeh. I'll throw in a tenner myself. Don't throw the poor devil to charity. We'll collect from the troupe. We raised forty dollars for a nigger wild man, once when--

THE DOCTOR: Come now; all this is not a drop in the bucket. This man needs an operation and then constant attention. If he pulls through, it is a question of months. What he actually needs then is country air, fresh milk, eggs, professional nursing, and plenty of it!

Miss HOAG: That's me, Doc! That's me! I'm going to fix just that for him. I got the means. I can show you three bank-books. I got the means and a place out in Ohio I can rent 'til I buy it some day. A farm! Fresh milk! Leghorns! I'll take him out there, Doc. Eighty miles from where I was born. I was thinking of laying up awhile, anyways. I got the means.

I'll pull him through, Doctor. I'll pull him through!

THE BARON: Good God! Teenie--you crazy--

FROM THE BED: Worth her weight in gold. Worth her weight in gold.

In the cup of a spring dusk that was filled to overflowing with an ineffable sweetness and the rich, loamy odors of turned earth; with rising sap and low mists; with blackening tree-tops and the chittering of birds--the first lamplight of all the broad and fertile landscape moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of slant, dipped down over the window, giving the facade the expression of a coolie under peaked hat.

"Great Scott! Move that lamp off the sill! You want to gimme the blind staggers?"

"I didn't know it was in your eyes, honey. There--that better?"

Silence.

A parlor hastily improvised into a bedroom came out softly in the glow.

A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the figure of Miss Hoag, hugely, omnipotently omnipresent.

"That better, Jas?" Silence. "Better? That's good! Now for the boy's supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up fluffy with sugar to make boy well, eh?"

Emaciated to boniness, the great frame jutting and straining rather terribly to break through the restraint of too tight flesh, Mr. Jastrow rose to his elbow, jaw-lines sullen.

"Cut out that baby talk and get me a swig, Teenie. Get me a drink before I get ugly."

"Oh, Jastrow honey, don't begin that. Please, Jastrow, don't begin that. You been so good all day, honey--"

"Get me a swig," he repeated through set teeth. "You and a boob country quack of a doctor ain't going to own my soul. I'll bust up the place again. I ain't all dead yet. Get me a swig--quick, too."

"Jas, there ain't none."

"There is!"

"That's just for to whip up five drops at a time with your medicine.

That's medicine, Jas; it ain't to be took like drink. You know what the doc said last time. He ain't responsible if you disobey. I ain't--neither. Please, Jas!"

"I know a thing or two about the deal I'm getting around here. No quack boob is going to own my soul."